Derrick Carpenter

Connected, written by Nicholas Christakis, MD, PhD and James Fowler, PhD, is a wonderfully engaging review of research and anecdotes that illuminate the incredible—and often overlooked—influence that our social networks have on our lives. A social network is any group of individuals who are connected to other individuals by a specific set of connections or ties across which influence or knowledge may be transmitted. Don’t worry. Much of the first chapter is dedicated to defining social networks and their properties.

Social networking websites such as Facebook are examples of social networks because people have “friends” or “connections” with whom they can share information (later chapters discuss these sites specifically). A corporate organizational chart and a diagram of mutual friends within a kindergarten class are other models of social networks. We form these networks because they help us manage our complex social world. Our social networks have extraordinary influence because we are not only affected by the people to whom we are directly connected, but also by the other people to whom our connections are connected.

RULES OF NETWORKS

Network

Christakis and Fowler lay out five important rules of social networks that are threaded throughout the book. They are:

Rule 1: We shape our network.

Rule 2: Our network shapes us.

Rule 3: Our friends affect us.

Rule 4: Our friends’ friends’ friends affect us.

Rule 5: The network has a life of its own.

Personally, I found rule number 4 to be the most unique and compelling. The authors highlight a number of research findings showing that the behaviors of people three degrees of separation away in a network (i.e. your friends’ friends’ friends) have an affect on your behavior. They call this the Three Degrees of Influence Rule.

The effects of these five rules are discussed in content-focused chapters that tackle a myriad of network-relevant topics from politics and money to hysteria epidemics, meeting Mr. (or Ms.) Right, and World of Warcraft. By the end of the book, I struggled to find an aspect of my daily life that wasn’t related to my social networks.

RELATION TO POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY

Connected is not, strictly speaking, a book solely about positive psychology topics, as the authors give fair play to both the positive and negative effects our social networks have on us. That said, I do highly recommend it as an addition to your positive psychology bookshelf for its valuable insights into the social aspects of emotional well-being, love, performance, and meaning (one chapter boasts the inspiring title “When You Smile, The World Smiles With You”).

The Three Degrees of Influence Rule has interesting implications on happiness. Being connected to a happy friend makes you 15 percent more likely to be happy yourself, while being connected at three degrees of separation makes you 6 percent more likely. Other research shows that an extra $10,000 makes people 2 percent more likely to be happy. So our friends’ friends’ friends have more impact on our well-being than a sizable amount of money.

The authors show similar findings that an individual’s obesity or charitable giving is influenced by the behavior of people three degrees away. I find the inverse of these findings inspiring. If you begin increasing your fitness level by working out and eating well, not only are you helping yourself, but you may also be positively influencing a lot of people in your network up to three degrees away.

NETWORKS APPLIED

One great asset of the book is its presentation of examples that might readily lead to real-world change. For instance, a person’s position within a network has significance, as it denotes how connected or disconnected he is. While it may seem obvious, the authors show that loneliness correlates highly with people at the edge of network models. By directly targeting social engagement interventions at the people at a network’s outskirts, the deleterious effects of loneliness might be limited efficiently.

Inspiring stories abound. The book starts with a story about a recipient of an organ donation that saved his life who subsequently encouraged his children to sign up as organ donors. One of his sons was later killed in an accident and his organ donations helped eight other people in need. Social networks are the very mechanisms that allow people to find rare things, like organs, they need. In commentary on the Internet and the effects of large-scale networks, the authors point out that people are now able to find support groups and interest groups for uncommon topics, including organ transplants, which might have left them isolated in the past. And in the case of the organ donation recipient, good deeds can be spread through our networks helping even more people.

US AT OUR BEST

Early in the book the authors comment on the six degrees of separation in relation to their Three Degrees rule: “If we are connected to everyone else by six degrees and we can influence them up to three degrees, then one way to think about ourselves is that each of us can reach about halfway to everyone else on the planet.”

I first read this and wrote “Inspiring!” in the margin. But as I continued through the book, I found that the real stories of the power of connection were more tangible.

In the best cases, our social connections represent us at our best, choosing meaningful bonds and loyalty over selfish alternatives. Christakis and Fowler tell the story of the 2001 season of the reality television show Survivor. As the season wound down, three contestants remained: Colby, Keith, and Tina. Colby, a young Texan, had just won immunity for the week and was allowed to decide who would face him in the final tribal meeting to decide the winner of the million dollar prize. All the previously banished contestants would be present and would vote for the winner. Keith, a chef from Detroit, had played the game a bit arrogantly and alienated several other players along the way. Tina, a nurse from Tennessee, on the other hand, was well liked by many of the other contestants. It seemed obvious that Colby should choose to face Keith, since the other contestants didn’t like him much and would declare Colby the winner. Instead, Colby chose Tina. Many viewers questioned Colby’s choice. During the episode in which the votes were cast, footage from the entire season played in which it became clear that Colby and Tina had both lasted so long due to a bond and alliance they had formed early on. Colby, it appeared, valued the connection and friendship over self-interest. Tina, as expected, won the million dollar prize.

Another workbook in the series presented by Robert Biswas-Diener’s Positive Psychology Services, Positively Happy: Routes to Sustainable Happiness is a superb workbook. Sonja Lyubomirsky and Jamie Kurtz have culled positive psychology’s best researched methods for creating a happier life. The workbook is structured in six chapters that are designed to take the reader through six weeks of reflection and application. The workbook material itself is fairly concise, but allowing one week per session provides time for experimentation with the practical tools—which are the focus—and room for additional readings which are liberally recommended at the end of each chapter.

The workbook closely follows Lyubomirsky’s The How of Happiness(PPND review here). Those have read the book will find similar and often overlapping information here, but this workbook can serve as either a more concise standalone or as a companion to the book allowing for directed reflection and experimentation with the suggested happiness-increasing strategies.

The first chapter provides a convincing background on the research-to-date on the importance of happiness and its effect on other areas in life. Lyubomirsky and Kurtz do a wonderful job of presenting their arguments in a fresh, relatable tone—they use HDTV to describe hedonic adaptation and provide web links for zen meditation. Although their evidence is convincing, ultimately, they allow us to choose if and how we want to apply the tools to our own lives.

Once we clearly understand why happiness matters, the workbook focuses on Lyubomirsky’s twelve concrete strategies for increasing happiness. I found this list to be an extraordinarily refreshing summary of positive psychology’s best tools which include expressing gratitude, increasing optimism, getting into flow, and savoring. Each topic includes a detailed description as well as written or practical exercises to encourage instantaneous uptake.

When appropriate, the workbook provides pre-assessments, followed by research, and then the exercises. It is a very crisp format that, accompanied by the encouragement of the authors to find strategies that best-fit the reader’s personality, allows for a highly interactive experience with the material. It is clear that the goal is to learn what works best for you, and the workbook simply serves as your guide through that journey of self-discovery.

Positive psychology veterans will be hard-pressed to find much that may not already be familiar on the research front. However, the clear packaging of the positive interventions throughout the course provides a great foundation for both newcomers eager to test the field out and practitioners looking for a well-structured view of positive psychology’s broad scope of application.

Simple Changes in Life Demand Hard Work

Above all, I appreciated the humility of the authors in noting that even simple changes in life demand hard work and attention to maintain, and that sustainability is the biggest piece of the puzzle. They write:

Although the twelve strategies may be simple to try for a short duration, it turns out that they are not so easy to sustain for the long haul – that is, for the time that it takes to witness real and sustainable changes in well-being.

An entire section at the end of the workbook is devoted to keeping up the momentum of positive change, a well-designed and necessary addition.

Overall, the workbook presents a beautiful balance of academic rigor and assessment, immediately applicable advice and tools, and warm encouragement to find your own true path to a happier and healthier life. It is a fantastic, brief introduction to the best of the positive psychology toolkit.

My over-analysis rarely takes me to a higher state of being. In many cases, I get caught in spirals of “What if…?” and “If it weren’t for…” that spin me around until I’m exhausted but still standing in exactly the same place. Most therapy and coaching practices ultimately focus on shifting energy from self-defeating thoughts to more self-serving ones. This is the foundation of cognitive-behavioral therapy. Lately, however, I’ve been thinking (obviously) that thinking less may be an equally viable alternative. We spend our days focusing on problem solving, multitasking, relating, and reading the latest Facebook update. Maybe our minds just need more rest!

The Importance of Rest and Recovery

Our brains weren’t designed to think non-stop. They naturally shut down to recover and consolidate information while we sleep. According to David Dinges, Ph.D., a sleep expert at the University of Pennsylvania, if a research subject who’s been awake for 22 hours gets behind the wheel of a car, he will have the same ability as someone with a .08 blood-alcohol level. For those students reading this, remember that the next time you contemplate an all-nighter. Practitioners of meditation achieve additional rest as they aim to quiet their conscious minds, and anyone taking part in an activity inducing flow may experience the same results.

Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz train executives using models that have proven successful with high-level athletes. One of the key components of their model involves cycles of rest and recovery. A top-level athlete would never train non-stop. Intense training is completed within a carefully constructed timeframe of rest, replenishment, and recovery. The body needs these breaks in order to make the biggest gains from training sessions.

Loehr and Schwartz claim our minds work the same way. An over-scheduled CEO whose brain is constantly on its feet will benefit tremendously from incorporating mental rest periods throughout her day and week. Shifting energy from the business-minded left brain to the creative right brain provides an oscillation of energy that stimulates and rests the whole mind.

Research by Dutch psychologist Ap Dijksterhuis and his colleagues has shown that shutting down analytical thought may be advantageous in solving logic-based problems. They fed research participants in three conditions a ton of information about a series of apartments and asked each to choose the optimal apartment. Those given time to work out the solution performed better than those asked to respond right away. But the interesting finding was in the third case. These participants were pulled away immediately after hearing the apartment data to focus on another task. After working on that task a while, they were immediately asked for the optimal apartment. Although they had no time to consciously work out the numbers, they outperformed both of the other groups.

These mental shifts may be more powerful than just solving logic problems. Author of A Stroke of Insight, neuroscientist Jill Bolte Taylor describes the experience of having a stroke after waking up one morning. The hemorrhage in her left brain hemisphere quieted that part of her mind and opened her attention to her right brain which was filled with feelings of peace, connectedness, and oneness with the universe. While she knew she was in trouble and needed help, she was in awe of what the other half of her brain was capable of. Her talk on TED is incredibly compelling.

So if our analytical brains need a rest, and we can benefit greatly from that rest, how do we achieve that? I think that may vary from person to person, but any creative outlet that limits your thinking may provide the rest you need. My current choice is to reconnect with musical creativity in the form blues guitar lessons. I’ve been inspired lately by many of John Mayer’s insightful song lyrics and figure getting lost in consciousness playing bluesy guitar riffs a couple hours a day might provide me the same enlightenment. I’ll keep you posted.

While walking to join a few friends yesterday evening at dusk, I passed through a lush green park in the center of Philadelphia. I was lost in my own head, contemplating the many interesting topics presented at the First World Congress on Positive Psychology of the International Positive Psychology Association (IPPA) this past weekend. As I stepped softly through the grass in the approaching darkness of the evening sky, a light suddenly caught my eye. Waist-level beside me, hovering in the summer air, was a firefly. Its body flashed, emitting a gorgeous amber light. It had been many years since I had seen one of these beautiful beetles and never before in Philadelphia.

I was instantly reminded of innocent and perfect childhood summers, laughing while running through my backyard hand-in-hand with friends and girls I had crushes on, swimming in a sea of hundreds of fireflies that would appear for only a few weeks every June, and only for a short period at dusk. I nearly gasped as these memories came flooding back. As I stopped to savor the moment, I saw another, then two more behind me, and five others to my right. They were all around me creating an incredible pattern of softly glowing light. Fireflies use a process of bioluminescence to attract mates and can usually be found in packs like this one. I began to wonder how one firefly emitting its lone light and slowly attracting others turns into the radiating sea of beauty in my childhood memories.

The Lucifer Effect and Fireflies

The IPPA Congress this past weekend featured endless fascinating topics including passion, courage, the mind-body connection, and meaning. One of my favorite talks was given by Stanford psychologist Phil Zimbardo who discussed the research presented in his book The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil . Using images from his famous Stanford prison experiment and real-world examples including the horrific treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, Zimbardo explained the power of situational influences that push otherwise good people to do bad things. To say the presentation was disturbing is an understatement. Audience members around covered their eyes and groaned in protest. Weren’t we gathered to discuss the best of human qualities, not the worst?

But just as fireflies use an enzyme luciferase to create their glow, Zimbardo believes there may a positive flip side to the Lucifer effect. His new research is focused on the processes involved when a person does the right thing despite the situational influences. He showed video of New York subway hero Wesley Autrey and photos of the famous Tank Man of Tiananmen Square and Lin Hao , the 9-year-old Chinese boy who rescued his classmates from the earthquake rubble of his school claiming, “I was hall monitor, it was my job to look after my classmates.” The audience wiped tears from their eyes. We all recognize heroes like these when we see them: individuals able to express the highest human strengths in times of crisis. Zimbardo calls this heroic imagination and stresses that the qualities of a hero must exist before the opportunity to express them is presented. We can all be heroes-in-waiting, ready to shine our light when the situation demands it.

Strengths in Numbers

Togetherness

While heroes are archetypes of a VIA strength due to a combination of internal forces, what are the external social effects of a heroic deed? Walking through the park, the light from the initial firefly caught my attention immediately. And when we view an heroic act, we are struck with awe and elevation that encourages us to look more intently (see Kathryn Britton’s Awe and Elevation ). The experience of awe produces positive emotions that prepare us to broaden and build our resources, by focusing our attention on the heroic deed and motivating us to acquire the same abilities. As Kathryn points out, viewing a virtuous deed encourages people to act more virtuously themselves.

Marcial Losada’s research on high-performance teams is often cited for the 3:1 positivity to negativity ratio findings which are both fascinating and powerful. Losada observes this ratio as a result of the overall connectedness of the team. The more that individuals trust and communicate with each other, the more easily information can flow in the social system. When connectedness is high, information passing through a social group resembles fluid dynamics. Adaptations proliferate throughout the system and change can occur quickly. When connectedness and trust are very high, heroic deed begets heroic deed and, as the tonnage of character strength increases in the population, large-scale social change becomes possible.

Positive Institutions

David Cooperrider received a rousing standing ovation at the IPPA Congress for his talk on Appreciative Inquiry that outlined a mission for the study and creation of positive institutions. His talk highlighted three key components of a strengths-based approach to organizational and institutional change.

The elevation and engagement of life-giving strengths at the human level

The connected and combined magnification of collective strengths

The refraction of our higher human strengths out into the world

Positive institutions, according to this breakdown, should grow strengths in individuals, encourage the sharing and synergy of strengths across the institution, and spread the collective strength to others. Cooperrider expressed a simple point that when our strengths connect, anything is possible. He told stories of business leaders sitting around tables with other business leaders pounding their fists on the table in reaction to the sustainable and inspiring practices of other companies. When we have access to better options, we usually take them. If we can create well-connected, fluid social systems, we have at our fingertips the capacity of all the collective human strength we can imagine. We can find an heroic solution for any situation.

Many species of firefly exhibit a biological synchronicity in the alignment of their flashing patterns when in large groups. They shine their light together and the result is an incredibly beautiful array of connected luminescence. The current research and practice is beginning to suggest that we work the same way when shining our strengths. As positive psychology continues to grow in both its breadth and its depth, flourishing positive institutions that support wide-scale strengths revolutions will serve as model research subjects and the heroes within them will continue to inspire us all.

I want you to close your eyes (well, read the rest of this paragraph first) and—for about a minute—think of the following words: sanctuary, tranquility, and retreat. What images come to mind? What thoughts, emotions, and sensations do you experience? Where might one find such things? (OK, close your eyes and give it a shot.)

The Transcendent Nature of NatureRaise your hand if your vision included scenes of nature: trees, sunshine, the beach, running water. I’m willing to bet a lot of you have your hands raised. To be fair, the title of this article may have primed you. But there is something incredibly powerful about the natural world and its ability to provide us with a sense of psychological well-being. Because today marks the 40th annual celebration of Earth Day in the United States, it seems a good opportunity to tie together a few positive psychology themes with Mother Nature.

The field of ecopsychology—founded on the belief that the natural world can have great impact on mental health since the natural world is where the modern human mind evolved—was formally founded in the early 90’s by history professor Theodore Roszak. But a tradition of nature-based spirituality extends to the origins of human civilizations. From pagan sun gods to Native American rain dances, nearly all cultures across the world and across history have revered nature.

Psychologists Stephen and Rachel Kaplan at the University of Michigan explain that nature experiences can have profound effects on an individual’s psychology. The researchers examined the effectiveness of one-to-two week wilderness programs by interviewing participants. Participants reported feelings of peace, wholeness and the ability to think more clearly. Further research studied the effect of employees having trees, bushes, or other natural scenes visible from their desks.

Those with nature-inspired views were less likely to report job frustrations and more likely to report enthusiasm for their job than those less fortunate.

Losing the Natural World

In the modern era of Netflix, Twitter, and ever-growing urban centralization, how many of us really connect with nature any more? I distinctly remember spending much of my childhood running through fields, catching insects, and climbing trees. I was lucky to have had a pre-internet youth and parents who limited my interest in, albeit archaic, videogames. But these days I’m lucky if I come within 50 feet of an actual tree most days, and even then, it’s usually through the glass of my car’s windshield.

Author Richard Louv warns of a modern epidemic of nature-deficit disorder in his book, The Last Child in the Woods. He views the experience of growing up in and around natural environments as vital to psychological well-being in adult life. But between technological distractions and a diminishing role of the outdoors in modern culture, he worries that we may be losing a part of ourselves as we lose our connection to nature. He writes:

Reducing that deficit—healing the broken bond between our young and nature—is in our self-interest, not only because aesthetics or justice demands it, but also because our mental, physical, and spiritual health depends upon it. The health of the earth is at stake as well. How the young respond to nature, and how they raise their own children, will shape the configurations and conditions of our cities, homes—our daily lives.

“The case is clear, but how can positive psychology help?” you ask. I believe positive psychology can inform our connection to nature in two significant ways. First, it provides great interventions to increase our connection to nature and thereby increase our happiness. Second, in order to enjoy those benefits and in honor of Earth Day, we must learn to be good stewards of the environment and take care of the natural world around us so future generations may reap the same benefits.

I invite you to add to these lists in the comments. I also encourage you to incorporate at least one of the suggestions from each list into your routine.

How a Healthy Planet Can Help Your Happiness

Savor a walk through the woods. Savoring can intensify and elongate positive experiences.

Exercise outdoors. Research by the Kaplans has shown that exercisers who walk outside in pleasant environments tend to walk longer than those who walk inside or around their neighborhoods.

Enjoy peak experiences. Nature-based excursions such as climbing a mountain or swimming in the ocean are great catalysts for peak experiences.

Appreciate the beauty of nature. Keeping a gratitude journal has been shown to increase subjective well-being. Why not focus a journal on nature-based gratitude and rekindle your character strength of appreciation of beauty and excellence at the same time.

Get into flow. Outdoor activities can be wonderful opportunities for flow and can include rock climbing, pruning a garden, or painting a sunset.

How You Can Help Promote a Healthy Planet

Earth from Space

Exercise self-regulation. Find ways to drive less, recycle more, and use less electricity by slowly building your self-regulatory muscles. Start in ways that are easiest for you and gently add more difficult ones.

Flaunt self-efficacy and optimism. Write to your government representative to express your support for a new initiative and encourage the effort.

Practice mindfulness. Be thoughtful about your environmental footprint for an entire part of your daily routine. For instance, choose to be mindful in the morning and take shorter showers, re-use towels, and bike or take a bus to work.

Build meaning through social connectedness. Help a friend plant a tree or gather a group of neighbors to begin a campaign for local community gardens.

Favor experience over comfort. Paul Rozin’s research suggests that happiness is increased more by positive experiences than by creature comforts, which we adapt to quickly. Crack your windows open to let a breeze in rather than cranking up the A/C or volunteer to clean up a local river instead of spending the afternoon in front of a TV.

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